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Mark Harrison Nov 16, 2017

Here's our review of Red Dwarf Xii's funny, fan-pleasing finale, available now to stream on UKTV Play. Spoilers...

This review contains spoilers. Don't read on if you haven't seen episode 6, which is available now on UK TV Play.

See related The Walking Dead season 8 episode 4 review: Some Guy The Walking Dead season 8 episode 3 review: Monsters The Walking Dead season 8 episode 2 review: The Damned

12.6 Skipper

“Gordon Bennett. Nobody's dead, Arnold. Nobody is dead."

The future of Red Dwarf remains open, but unconfirmed. Short of UK TV announcing a Day Of The Doctor style special to go out in the next twelve months, it looks like Skipper is as the closest thing we'll get to a 30th anniversary special from Doug Naylor and the gang. If that's the case, it fills those boots rather spectacularly, while simultaneously playing as fast and loose with continuity as it always has.

As...

Rob Leane May 8, 2017

Audible’s Alien: River Of Pain expands the story of Aliens, giving us more Ripley and a deeper understanding of Hadley’ s Hope...

Alien: River Of Pain, the novel by Christopher Maggs, has been given a glossy audio drama adaptation by Dirk Maggs and the fine folks at Audible.

The story is set before and during the events of Aliens, offering further details about the Hadley’s Hope colony of Lv-426, what went wrong there, and how the decision was made to send Ripley, Burke, Bishop and the Colonial Marines to investigate.

A number of cast members from the film reprise their roles: William Hope as Lieutenant Gorman, Mac MacDonald as Colony Administrator Al Simpson, Stuart Milligan as the salvager that found Ripley drifting in deep space, and Alibe Parsons as Gateway Station’s med tech.

New additions to the cast include Colin Salmon, Alexander Siddig,...

Rob Leane May 5, 2017

It’s been a while since we saw her on the big screen, but Ellen Ripley lives on in books, audio dramas and games...

This article contains spoilers for Alien: Isolation and Star Wars: Rogue One

See related American Gods episode 1 review: The Bone Orchard American Gods cast interview: Ian McShane, Ricky Whittle, Emily Browning American Gods: Bryan Fuller interview

Now that Neill Blomkamp’s much-talked-about Alien 5 idea – which would have brought back Sigourney Weaver and offered an alternate sequel to Aliens, wiping Alien 3 from the canon - seems to be off the cards, chances are that we won’t see Ellen Ripley back on the big screen any time soon.

Rumours and rumblings suggest that Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel series (which began with Prometheus and will continue very soon with Alien: Covenant) may eventually feature an aged-down Weaver back in the...

Stars: Michael Keaton, Nick Offerman, John Carroll Lynch, Laura Dern, Linda Cardellini, B.J. Novak, Justin Randell Brooke, Kate Kneeland, Patrick Wilson | Written by Robert D. Siegel | Directed by John Lee Hancock

Is there a more American director working in film than John Lee Hancock? He’s covered the Alamo; yanked Republican heartstrings in The Blind Side; and in Saving Mr. Banks he went to Disney World. Now he turns his attention to another great American institution: McDonald’s.

Michael Keaton, employing every tic and smirk at his disposal, plays Ray Kroc, a struggling salesman scouring the Midwest, desperate to offload his milkshake multi-mixers. Disillusioned by bad service and lengthy wait times, he happens upon a highly successful burger joint run by brothers Dick and Mac McDonald (Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch). Through years of planning and experience they have perfected a system of fast food before it’s even a thing.

Author: Stefan Pape

Much was made of Matthew McConaughey’s renaissance, affectionately dubbed as The McConaissance’. While sounding like a new line of hamburgers at McDonalds, the role of Ray Kroc in The Founder fell into the lap of another actor enjoying something of a career rejuvenation, as Michael Keaton takes on the part of the man behind a restaurant that feeds 1% of the world’s population. Having been the lead star in both of the last two winners of Best Picture at the Academy Awards (Birdman, Spotlight) – this latest endeavour won’t ensure the actor makes it three in a row, and to be honest, you can see why.

Ray Kroc was a travelling businessman, desperately trying to offload milkshake machines to diners across the States. Out of the blue, one company made an order for six machines, and at first believing it to be an administrative error, for...

Micheal Keaton stars in the story of the man who brought McDonald's to the world....

The last time Laura Dern worked on a project involving writer/director John Lee Hancock, it was the excellent A Perfect World, that Hancock wrote and Clint Eastwood directed. There, she had a meaty role, and brought to it the gravity and commitment we’ve come to expect from a Laura Dern performance. For Hancock’s latest, The Founder – which he directs, this time from a script by Robert Siegel – it’s incredibly miserable then to see Dern reduced to what may just be the most thankless role of her career. Here, she’s the wife of Michael Keaton’s Ray Kroc, but in terms of a character on screen, her job is to wear either an evening dress or nightwear, and basically to scowl at and nag her husband. Like most of The Founder,...

Chicago – Michael Keaton is the real reason to see “The Founder” – it’s a movie that probably wouldn’t work at all without him. Keaton portrays Ray Kroc, the man who turned McDonald’s into a multinational fast food behemoth. But “The Founder” is an origin story of both the man and the brand…and Kroc is not the genius of American business he’s been made out to be.

Rating: 4.0/5.0

When the story opens, Kroc (Keaton) is a traveling salesman going from drive-in to drive-in peddling milkshake machines. You can almost see the sweat stains under his shirt as he tries to drum up a sale, but to no avail. He’s sold many things over the years, and is worried he’s about to run out of road on this particular trip, before he gets to the American Dream. He learns of McDonald’s when the small burger...

MaryAnn’s quick take… Rather brilliant and kind of inspiring until it turns frightening and even sinister. A dark tale of the beginning of end-stage capitalism as profit above all. I’m “biast” (pro): love Michael Keaton

I’m “biast” (con): nothing

(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)

A year or so ago, I had my first McDonald’s hamburger in maybe a decade, probably longer. I plead drinking — I had been out with a bunch of friends — and it was purely to stave off the next day’s hangover by getting down some grease and carbs to absorb the alcohol. But, man, that burger was delicious. Seriously. So good. (I haven’t had another one since.) They really know what they’re doing at Micky D’s.

I have also once attended what was then the world’s biggest McDonald’s, in Vinita, Oklahoma.

“Here is the church. Here is the steeple. Except this one has golden arches, and feeds all the people.”

Do you like my update to the child’s game above (you know, with the hand motions and stuff), inspired by McDonald’s CEO Ray Kroc? As The Founder tells us, Kroc equated McDonald’s illuminated “golden arches” to small-town beacons like church steeples or town hall flags. That’s what he saw when visiting the McDonald brothers’ first restaurant and their air-tight production chain – a product, efficiency and franchise potential.

Kroc was a salesman looking for his next big score, and through perseverance, he stumbled upon a fast-food empire in the making that no one could deny him. Not the good-old-boy McDonald brothers (who he screwed), not his first wife (who he divorced), and certainly not those rich, entitled friends he first looked to for help. Kroc’s story is...

Fascinating, subtle film on the machinations of Ray Kroc, the ruthless, insecure man who made a burger joint an empire and sold out its originators

All this film’s irony and ambiguity are showcased in the title, though Birth of a Salesman was an alternative that occurred to me. The Founder is an absorbing and unexpectedly subtle movie about the genesis of the McDonald’s burger empire. There is an avoiding of obviousness that resides in its clever casting of not-immediately-dislikable Michael Keaton as Ray Kroc, the needy, driven, insecure marketing type with the predatory surname who masterminded a nationwide franchising for the original California hamburger restaurant in the 1950s; finally taking it away from its owners and revolutionary fast-food pioneers, Dick and Mac McDonald, played by Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch.

Keaton is never the cartoon bad guy, not even at the very end. His moonfaced openness makes him look like a giant,...

Chicago – In the latest HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Film, we have 25 pairs of advance-screening movie passes up for grabs to the new true-story film “The Founder” starring Michael Keaton about the creation of McDonald’s!

“The Founder,” which opens on Jan. 20, 2017 and is rated “PG-13,” also stars Nick Offerman, John Carroll Lynch, Patrick Wilson, Laura Dern, B.J. Novak, Linda Cardellini and Kate Kneeland from director John Lee Hancock and writer Robert D. Siegel.

To win your free passes to “The Founder” courtesy of HollywoodChicago.com, just get interactive with our social media widget below. That’s it! This screening is on Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2017 at 7 p.m. in Chicago. The more social actions you complete, the more points you score and the higher yours odds of winning! Completing these social actions only increases your odds of winning; this doesn’t intensify your competition!

Preferably, use your computer to enter rather than your smartphone.

Both times that I saw Rogue One: A Star Wars Story in theaters I was treated to a trailer for The Founder. The film caught my attention because, well, it stars freakin' Michael Keaton, and because it seems like a great story that's pretty much never been told. So I'm in!

And today, I get to share with you three new clips from The Founder, as well as an official synopsis for the film that will show us about a key business decision that practically changed the world.

Here are the new clips from The Founder, starring Michael Keaton:

"Real Milk"

"You're In The Real Estate Business"

"Selling The American Dream"

Directed by John Lee Hancock (Saving Mr. Banks), The Founder features the true story of how Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton), a struggling salesman from Illinois, met Mac and Dick McDonald, who were running a burger operation in 1950s Southern California.

Directed by John Lee Hancock (Saving Mr. Banks), The Founder features the true story of how Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton), a struggling salesman from Illinois, met Mac and Dick McDonald, who were running a burger operation in 1950s Southern California. Kroc was impressed by the brothers’ speedy system of making the food and saw franchise potential. Writer Robert Siegel (The Wrestler) details how Kroc maneuvered himself into a position to be able to pull the company from the brothers and create a billion-dollar empire. The film also stars Laura Dern as Ray Kroc’s first wife Ethel; John Carroll Lynch as Mac McDonald and Nick Offerman as Dick McDonald.

The movie opens in cinemas January 20.

Wamg invites you to enter for the chance to win Two (2) seats to the advance screening of The Founder on Wednesday, January 18 at 7Pm in the St. Louis area.

Answer the following:

In the 1970’s...

The world of film, and biopics specifically, may often seem like a world that is running out of ideas. Biopics are not only films that often come with a decent audience built into the scheme, they are also frequently found among award contenders, but that doesn’t mean that the story of everyone’s life is one that people are interested in hearing.

We’re all familiar with McDonald’s, but does that mean anyone cares how the company became the behemoth it did? While recent films about Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs seem to have more inherent pull to them than the idea of selling burgers, and then selling a lot more of them, there’s a lot more to the Ray Kroc story than you might imagine. It all starts with the fact that his name is rather conspicuously not “McDonald.”

As you’ll see in the trailer for The Founder,...

I recently had the chance to catch a screening of the upcoming film The Founder, which tells the story of how McDonalds rose to fast food power. It was a great movie, and Michael Keaton gave an awesome performance that should secure him an Oscar nomination.

Keaton plays Ray Kroc, who was a milkshake machine salesman who saw potential in McDonalds back in the 1950s when there was only one location being run by two brothers. Kroc is the guy who jumped at the opportunity to transform it into a huge franchise. Along the way, he did some stuff that really makes you not like the guy. I already wasn't a fan of McDonalds, but this movie made me like it even less.

The movie was marvelously directed by John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side, Saving Mr. Banks), and this is the synopsis:

The founder tells the true story of how Ray Kroc,...

The Weinstein Company has released a new trailer for The Founder, starring Michael Keaton, directed by John Lee Hancock.

The movie opens in cinemas January 20.

Directed by John Lee Hancock (Saving Mr. Banks), The Founder features the true story of how Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton), a struggling salesman from Illinois, met Mac and Dick McDonald, who were running a burger operation in 1950s Southern California. Kroc was impressed by the brothers’ speedy system of making the food and saw franchise potential.

Writer Robert Siegel (The Wrestler) details how Kroc maneuvered himself into a position to be able to pull the company from the brothers and create a billion-dollar empire. The film also stars Laura Dern as Ray Kroc’s first wife Ethel; John Carroll Lynch as Mac McDonald and Nick Offerman as Dick McDonald.

Visit the official site: thefounderfilm.com

twitter.com/thefounderfilm

facebook.com/thefounderfilm

The post Watch Michael Keaton...

I'm fascinated by the history and story behind businesses and how some of the biggest, most popular and successful brands got their start. The Founder tells the true story of how McDonald's exploded into the epic fast food chain that it is now.

Michael Keaton stars in the film as Ray Kroc, who saw potential in the burger business back in the 1950s and wanted to transform it into a moneymaking franchise. To do that he had to pull off some shady shit. From what I've seen in the trailers, the film reminds me a lot of The Social Network. The film just got a limited release so it qualifies for the Oscars. I think Keaton's got a good chance to get nominated for this. Here's the synopsis:

The Founder, directed by John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side, Saving Mr. Banks), features the true story of how Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton...

The Weinstein Co. has released a second trailer for their upcoming film The Founder. Check it out now.

Directed by John Lee Hancock (Saving Mr. Banks), The Founder features the true story of how Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton), a struggling salesman from Illinois, met Mac and Dick McDonald, who were running a burger operation in 1950s Southern California.

Kroc was impressed by the brothers’ speedy system of making the food and saw franchise potential. Writer Robert Siegel (The Wrestler) details how Kroc maneuvered himself into a position to be able to pull the company from the brothers and create a billion-dollar empire. The film also stars Laura Dern as Ray Kroc’s first wife Ethel; John Carroll Lynch as Mac McDonald and Nick Offerman as Dick McDonald.

(Review)

The film opens on Jan. 20, 2017.

https://www.facebook.com/thefounderfilm/

The post Michael Keaton Stars In New Trailer For The Founder appeared...

The Weinstein Company announced that writer/director John Lee Hancock’s upcoming feature The Founder, will premiere in theaters today, December 7, 2016 at the Arclight Hollywood for a 1-week awards qualifying engagement. John Lee Hancock, along with members of the cast, will be participating in Q&A’s at the theater over the course of the weekend. Following the 1-week run, the film will open with a theatrical release nationwide on January 20, 2017.

The Founder is the most recent in a series of critically acclaimed films produced and distributed by TWC and FilmNation Entertainment. Other notable films include John Carney’s indie musical Sing Street, Academy Award nominated film The Imitation Game, and 2011 Academy Award winning best picture The King's Speech.

The Founder, directed by John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side, Saving Mr. Banks), features the true story of how Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton), a struggling salesman from Illinois, met Mac and Dick McDonald,...

The Weinstein Company has moved up the qualifying run of its Michael Keaton starrer.

The Founder opened in Los Angeles on December 7 for one week ahead of nationwide roll-out on January 20.

John Lee Hancock directed the story of McDonald’s entrepreneur Ray Kroc and will take part with the cast in a week-long series of Q&A’s as Harvey Weinstein pushes for awards.

The film also stars Laura Dern as Kroc’s first wife Ethel; Linda Cardellini as his second wife Joan Smith; John Carroll Lynch as Mac McDonald and Nick Offerman as Dick McDonald.

The 16th annual Canada’s Top Ten Film Festival will run from January 13-26 at Tiff Bell Lightbox in Toronto before touring select cities. The line-up showcases the best Canadian features, shorts and student shorts in 2016 selected by a panel of seven filmmakers and industry professionals. Zacharias Kunuk’s Maliglutit (Searchers) opens the programme, which includes...

Revenge of the pumpkins, indeed! Picking up where the story left off in the very first issue, Blood & Gourd #2: Escape from Henderson Farms will be released next Wednesday, September 7th. Also in today’s Horror Highlights: a new clip from Chiller Films’ Siren and a new trailer and official poster for Somnus.

Blood & Gourd #2 Cover Art & Release Details: Press Release: “It’s Devil’s Night in Olympia, Wa- and out at Henderson Farms, the festivities are reaching a crescendo. Young and old have gathered to pick their own pumpkin, drink hot apple cider, and partake in the usual pumpkin farm fare. However, something has awakened from deep within the fertile soil. After years of abuse and humiliation, the pumpkins… are ready to pick us. You can beg! You can plead! You can scream! But these Hell’s lanterns are lit only with the burning desire to watch. You. Die!

I’ve got a great trailer you've gotta watch for an upcoming sci-fi film called Somnus. The movie was directed by Chris Reading from a script he co-wrote with Russell Owen.

The story follows the crew of “an aging cargo ship on their final mission working the monotonous Earth-Mars shipping route. Malfunctions aboard the ship force a change of course to Somnus, a remote asteroid colony. The crew soon discovers the inhabitants of the colony have a dark past, and troubling plans for the future of mankind.”

This is the first feature film that Reading has made and it looks like it could be a pretty awesome movie! According to the press release, the film was inspired by the iconic work of Douglas Trumbull in such films as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Reading also wanted to use practical effect techniques to make the...

A Red Dwarf movie was announced in 2000, and news on it would follow for years afterwards. So: what happened?

When the eighth series of Red Dwarf left our screens in 1999, with the titular (nanobotically-reconstituted) mining vessel being devoured by a highly corrosive micro-organism, it left us with the words “The End” emblazoned over the image, before being replaced by “The Smeg It Is.”

And then, nothing.

It was ten years before the boys from the Dwarf were back on our screens, albeit for a three-episode run on Dave. But that lost decade was not spent watching re-runs of The Flintstones, nor was everyone trapped in a completely immersive video game indistinguishable from reality. Most of it involved co-creator Doug Naylor (his comedy partner Rob Grant left the show after season six), trying to get a movie off the ground.

This had not been the plan. But with the BBC rejecting...

Alright, my backwoods buddies, it looks like we have some casting announcements for Wrong Turn 3 (which we last wrote on here). Have yourself a look at the latest batch of bodies to do battle with the mutant, forest-dwelling flesh-eaters: Tom Frederic (The Oxford Murders), Janet Montgomery and Mike Straub (both from The Hills Run Red), Tamer Hassan (The Ferryman), Gil Kolirin and Chucky Venice (both from Return To House On Haunted Hill), and Mac McDonald (Transsiberian). Okay, so no...